


Where the Mind Is Without Fear

by the_rck



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Calculation, Captivity, Character Study, Detached consideration of suicide, Endurance - Freeform, Introspection, M/M, References to Torture, References to subsistence farmers starving when the crops fail, Sith, The Force, references to rape, resignation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-16 13:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13637001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: The Emperor’s soul was drier and colder than the deepest nights on Tatooine. Vader’s soul burned, pulling fuel from the Force in order to keep the fires going. Luke watched both of them with great care and tried very hard not to imitate either. Pain, fear, and desperation weren’t going to be enough to drive him down either path toward poisoning his soul.His deepest, most secret fear was finding a path to damnation that was entirely his own.





	Where the Mind Is Without Fear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ancslove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancslove/gifts).



> The dark stuff here is referenced rather than explicit, but it kind of permeates every word. There are references to torture, references to rape, references to subsistence farmers starving, and detached consideration of suicide.
> 
> Thanks to Rain for beta reading.
> 
> Title from Rabindranath Tagore's "Gitanjali 35."

Luke spent most of his time focusing on absolutely anything but what was happening to his body. He knew, of course, because, if he disconnected entirely, if his pain didn’t send ripples through the Force, Sidious would notice. If Sidious realized that Luke could still touch the Force, it was only a short step to realizing that Luke could speak to Leia. At the moment, Sidious saw no reason at all to keep Luke from learning or hearing or observing because there wasn’t any way that Luke could pass on the information. Sidious cared even less about what Luke might find in otherwise restricted historical databases.

Sidious knew how much of the present and future could be understood from digging into the past. He just assumed Luke couldn’t do anything with what he found. History was not a lightsaber. History was not the tool of a Jedi.

Luke was and wasn’t a Jedi. He’d said he was, and he might actually be, but he could have added that he was also a farmer. He’d grown up helping to cultivate some of the most unforgiving acres on Tatooine, and Tatooine was not a forgiving planet.

Knowing what would happen when he was summoned to the Emperor’s bed had nothing on the knowledge of what would happen when the crops got worms and died overnight or when they got scales and became toxic. Scales were worse because everything still looked more or less edible, and a lot of people risked it because dying slow was harder.

Outside the spaceports, the human population of Tatooine didn’t generally increase. The Hutts subsidized the spaceports and provided for their slaves. The freeholds could crumble and be carried off by the wind. Someone would be by to round up the droids after the last farmer died.

Sidious had grown up on Naboo. He didn’t perceive the difference that made. He didn’t understand that everything he was doing was refining Luke, purifying Luke, making Luke choose which parts of himself were essential to the forging.

None of that made the process more pleasant.

Luke really hoped that Leia didn’t sense very much of what was happening at the times when he wasn’t reaching out to her. He didn’t think she’d do anything really stupid in an effort to rescue him, but other people might. Leia also might not think the information he was passing on was worth the price.

It probably wasn’t.

She didn’t realize that he was teaching her the things he thought were important about the Force. He had little but warnings about the Sith, but very little of what he passed on was rooted in Jedi ideology or traditions either. Luke respected Ben and loved Yoda, but they were both very nearly as broken as Vader. They looked better and were less actively dangerous to bystanders and minions, but they weren’t actually any more functional.

Less, actually. They’d both sat on their asses waiting for Luke to grow up and kill his father. Which was completely backwards from an effectiveness point of view. Without Sidious, Vader would explode. It wouldn’t be pretty, and a lot of people would die, but he’d be gone. Luke had no idea what Yoda and Ben had thought would happen to the Emperor once Luke killed Vader. Vanishing in a puff of inconvenience?

More likely, he’d have been gleeful at encountering a new opponent who might present something-- anything-- unexpected. He never expected to lose because he hadn’t before, but winning was his addiction and required opposition. It was just that really winning-- thoroughly winning-- meant running out of challenges. Darth Sidious wanted both an eternal game and devastatingly thorough victory.

It was all about scoring points and about seeing seventeen paths forward while being the only person with a choice about which to take.

Eventually, Luke would be able to use that. An opportunity would come, and it almost certainly wouldn’t involve the Force at all.

The Emperor’s current game was rape and torture to see what Luke would do when he broke. To see what Vader would do as Luke got closer to breaking. Any outcome at all would be interesting-- Luke’s psyche might shatter. Luke might fall to the Dark Side. Luke might die or kill himself. Luke might try to kill-- or actually kill-- someone. Vader might do something other than pretend that Luke didn’t exist.

Luke gave it 49% that Vader would kill Luke and 49% that Vader would try to kill his master. The remaining 2% was the chance that he’d try to do something actually useful. Luke only gave the third option that much because Vader had never told Sidious about Leia.

The Emperor’s soul was drier and colder than the deepest nights on Tatooine. Vader’s soul burned, pulling fuel from the Force in order to keep the fires going. Luke watched both of them with great care and tried very hard not to imitate either. Pain, fear, and desperation weren’t going to be enough to drive him down either path toward poisoning his soul.

His deepest, most secret fear was finding a path to damnation that was entirely his own. Realizing that the Emperor only knew one path toward the Dark Side and that Vader didn’t even know that had come as an immense relief. Defending himself against them along one axis was much simpler than doing so along many.

Not that the Emperor was stupid. He knew that Luke’s emotional equilibrium rested partially on stubbornness, and he worked at breaking that. The only reason he hadn’t succeeded was that he didn’t understand what supported the stubbornness.

If Vader had remembered being Anakin Skywalker, had recalled Tatooine, he might have understood, but Vader seemed to have shoved everything he couldn’t be angry about into a leaky box in the depths of his mind. Every memory that tried to escape was met with fire. The process was so automatic that Vader no longer even noticed it.

Luke suspected that he knew enough, now, to shatter that box entirely. He’d come close to doing it at Endor but hadn’t quite managed. Now, he had his mother’s name. He knew her mannerisms. 

Sidious thinking that explaining the details of Anakin Skywalker’s journey to the Dark Side was simply a way to hurt Luke further when his body couldn’t take more was one of the clearest indications he’d given that he understood nothing at all about Luke.

Or perhaps Sidious knew but wanted to see what Luke would do with the information.

Luke probably wouldn’t survive doing it, but he almost certainly could break Vader that way. He kept it in mind as a method for suicide if he got really, really desperate.

It would have to be desperation because Luke would have no control of or influence over what Vader did after that. Or… Possibly not desperation if someone else was there-- he didn’t even let himself think of Leia, but it would almost have to be her. Luke wasn’t going to survive long enough for anyone else-- to direct things after Luke died.

Luke’s current theory was that Vader’s state was an expected phase on the way to Sidious’s. Luke strongly suspected that Vader had clung to it much, much longer than he was supposed to. Vader staying there had benefited his master because it limited Vader’s power and because it kept Vader from moving on to the stage where everything was ice and scoring points was all that mattered. Once Vader reached that point, either Sidious would die or Vader would.

Sidious needed that risk. If he didn’t, Luke would have died on the second Death Star. Sidious was certain that personally killing his son would tip Vader over, would make him finish the fall that had begun decades before. Sidious had given up on pushing Luke over the edge, but torturing Luke was a different way to apply pressure to Vader.

Luke wasn’t supposed to know that. Luke wasn’t supposed to know anything at all about Sidious and his motives because Luke wasn’t supposed to be able to touch the Force any more. Sidious had cackled over that, and Vader seemed to believe it, too. 

Luke didn’t quite understand how that was supposed to work given that true absence of the Force wouldn’t just kill him-- If he was beyond its touch, that lack would rip him out of existence entirely. Luke Skywalker would never have existed at all. The universe would rewrite itself to do without him.

No device was ever going to manage the amount of power needed for that.


End file.
